Wet and Wild Weather

The past week in Hawaii has had everyone recalling the last serious monsoon we endured, in 2006. "Was that 40 days of rain or 42?"  We liked the Biblical proportion, but 42 is a good number too, but I hope we aren't repeating the past.  I can do without mudslides, flash floods, hail (we had some this week), severe alert warnings on my TV and iPad, and less severe manifestations of too much water: the passenger-side door of TAO 61 filled up with water this week and made a mysterious sloshing sound when I would start and stop.  It seems to have abated.

And there was water all over my kitchen floor one morning, although this had nothing to do with wet weather.  It was difficult to determine whence it flowed. The water line to the fridge?  The dishwasher? The new bottled water cooler?  (The most likely culprit.) After doing what the bottled water company suggested ("We call this 'troubleshooting'," the customer service rep said), I tracked it to the water cooler, but still not sure if it is the bottle or the device.  The troubleshooting involved removing the big bottle from the cooler--how to do this?--so I just drained off the excess into teakettle, large jug and a curious bit of swag I had in the cupboard: a Camelbak bottle, a pricey thing I'd never used. (I'm not one of those people who go nowhere without a bottle of water.)

It took some tinkering and a web search to figure out the point of the technological Camelbak, which is like a leakproof automatic straw delivery system.  I showed it to the Wizard. "Look, you just bite here and suck lightly and the water just flows into your mouth."  It's a lot like a breast really, a nipple.

"Gross," he said, "besides, I hate the taste of plain water." That's an ongoing source of amusement; he always sends back the water in restaurants with a little rant: water's not good for you, while ordering an aperitif of Strega.

Of course, water is essential to you, and this universal spiritual metaphor not only sustains us but teaches.

The normally placid, stagnant even, stream past our apartment complex was raging this week.  Where frogs usually peep and croak, and ducks occasionally visit, this week was raging like the Yellow River for an imperial ceremony.  This "streaming video" was taken from the 10th floor of my building:



Through the storm, it is best just to be calm, hang on and wait for the turbulence to pass.  It surely will. These bulbuls, outside my office, were very strong and patient:



Water-however it reaches us, in a raging stream, pelting from the heavens, or from a water bottle-- keeps us alive, shapes the earth and cleanses.  I thought of this while being shampooed after an overdue haircut yesterday.  My hairdresser, an intense and enthusiastic Filipina who loves the shape of my head and is willing to do a very close crop, commented, "You hair grew so fast.  When were you here last?"

"Maybe two moons ago," I said, recalling that the storm had somehow overshadowed the full moon earlier this week. (No wonder my head was itchy.  I tend to time my haircuts--not completely on purpose, maybe instinctually--to the phases of the moon.)  I was thinking how much I sounded like a Navajo from an old Western horse opera, when she said, "So Chinese. That's why you like China!"  Then it occurred to me that there are lunar cultures and solar ones.

I asked the Wizard, my in-house walking wikipedia, if the Mayan calendar was a lunar one or a solar one, thinking that the attributes of a culture may have something to do with the calendar they use.

On the wall of my lanai; not exactly a taiji.

"It's solar," he said, "but probably the greatest cultures use both."  I want to think some more about this, to make an informed observation.  Does the calendar of a culture affect its "personality"?  Are there yin cultures and yang cultures?  Do two calendars balance the culture?

Whatever, there is still the rain.  And sometimes you must be patient by yourself under an umbrella or a palm frond.

Haircut Moon

Once again renewed by a close haircut (which suggests more Buddhist tendencies* than Taoist**) and pivoting of the dark/new moon, I am feeling yang energy rising like the bubbles in champagne.  (Perhaps that "falling" thing that Guinness does is yin energy?)

Yesterday in a neighborhood where I rarely do business or shopping, on a sunny, balmy morning, after a hurried necessary bank deposit, I stopped in at a shop I never noticed before.  All banks are pretty much the same, and so too perhaps, all shops offering "Himalayan Treasures."  Just a quick poke-about to see what was on offer, I picked up some incense and a random CD, not knowing if it would be chanting or Nepali jazz. It turns out to be pretty good, manufactured and marketed by the Kathmandu Music Center. 

The music, new-agey jazzy with tablas and sitars and flutes and western guitars, highlighted a very peaceful and positive feeling I haven't had in the middle of an ordinary workday for a while; satisfied, happy, and complete, I am liking my job.

For which I today needed to remake some travel arrangements to add on a week of mainland visits...a whirlwind to Atlanta and Washington for some training and project planning.  The two weeks will culminate over Veterans Day with another quick stop to visit my son in Portland, Ore., where there is another Himalayan shop with a big brass bowl that has been singing my name to my heart since last I visited.  I didn't want to bring a huge singing bowl back with me on a plane, and now I find some very nice similar bowls on King Street, right here in Pacific Ocean City.  Is it appropriate to ask for a Tibetan singing bowl for Christmas?

My travel plans conflict with something delightful I found in the mail on the same energetic day: an invitation to the opening of "Masterpieces of Landscape Painting from the Forbidden City," an exhibit at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, where I have studied Chinese painting over the past three years.  Quel dommage, my teacher will probably be there, and I will be some tens of thousands of feet over Cleveland.  Still the exhibit continues through January 8, so after I tire of my Christmas singing bowl, I can be sure to take in the landscapes.  And I can take advantage of the lecture series which includes topics like "How to Read a Chinese Painting," "Confucianism and the Aesthetics of Becoming Consummately Human," (with UH's own sage of the Tao, Roger Ames), "Dong Qichang and the Formation of the Literati Canon" and "Landscape Painting and Garden Design."  Such are the topics I had hoped, in vain, would be part of the current "Oriental Painting" class I am taking right now.

I will also miss the concurrent film series, "Cinematic Treasures from China, ...highlighting the influential, trailblazing films of Chinese, Taiwanese and Chinese-American filmmakers."  But I've not only seen all these films by Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, and Ang Lee, I own them all.

So many good things happen all at the same time.  The only thing I will really miss is a lion dance at the exhibit opening.  I'll have to wait for Chinese New Year for that.  And since at such a late date, I couldn't get a non-smoking room in Atlanta, I will carry with me some "energy" and "wisdom" Himalayan incense to burn there: it is a smoking room after all!

*My own ongoing private Asian film festival is currently featuring a long Chinese series, "The Shaolin Warriors," about Shaolin monks and pirates.  It features Sammo Hung and his adorable son Sammy, as a Shaolin master and a monk.  What I can't figure out is, while Sammy and his warrior mates are properly shaved,  Sammo Shifu sports  a hairdo that looks like my own shoulder length locks circa 1972.  Do Shaolin masters use hot rollers?  In one scene, Sammy and his reluctant monk buddy actually wash the master's hair.

**A Taoist master I met in Wudang last May, when asked what one had to do to be a real Taoist, said: 1) you must know the history of your lineage, the generations; 2) you must have a deep understanding of Tao, and 3) you must grow your hair long, for at least three years, to be natural and to be able to wear the taiji topknot at the bai hui point, where yin and yang meet.  In fact the topknot is twisted in a kind of chignon to create a yin/yang object.  No wonder the Buddhists shave their heads.

Sun and Moon Obsessions

Although the Summer Solstice came and went, marked largely by my beginning a new job...auspicious for me, I guess, but no one else, I note today, once again, that it is the mid-point, the yin/yang pivot really, of the Gregorian year, as many days ahead as behind. Just past new and dark, the moon begins to wax today (wax on/wax off). This weekend, a chance to regulate my breath, contemplate the cycles of my life, clean a closet, make a painting, get a haircut, finish the intriguing A New Interpretation of Chinese Taoist Philosophy - An Anthropological/Psychological View, by You-Sheng Li, Ph.D. (2005).

I acquired this volume of apparently self-published essays (which I recommend to fellow Tao-seekers and persons interested in Chinese cultural studies) almost two years ago, but it only just recently jumped off my shelf, after my return from Wudang Pilgrimage IV (吴朝圣四). In it Dr. Li hangs many of his arguments on an anthropological distinction between primary and secondary society (echoing the pre-heaven and post-heaven Taoist concepts). In an essay called "The South and The North," in a subsection "Social Power and Talented Culture are Separate," he writes (in a somewhat Aristotelian way):

Industry is near the military side, while education and academics are near the basic human nature side. ... Universities and academic institutions are places where human talents are concentrated. ... Military power is measurable and material stuff is measurable but human nature is not measurable.

Now I understand why I may be happier, in a Taoist way, in an academic institution (even though doing essentially the same things, managing proposals) than I was in a high-tech firm that did network security R&D for the DoD. I became frustrated at the over-emphasis on metrics and processes, at the expense of human nature, that seemed unrelated to the actual good we might have been accomplishing. To articulate this at this pivotal moment in the annual cycle seems significant to me. Tao manifests itself in my life in the most surprising ways.

Ah, now to that haircut....

Haircut Moon

Cleared two complete lunar cycles of karma with a purifying haircut, to discover I did it on the verge of an interesting full moon. Some people think that cutting hair at the full moon makes it grow faster, so my hairdresser may promote that time for standing appointments. Accustomed to my request for serious pruning (please remove the Barbara Bush), she raves over my color (or lack of it). "I could use you for a model for grey-haired women," she says, "except I didn't do that color. It's so beautiful." So she says. And she likes the shape of my head, which is just as well when trimming it to less than two inches at the longest, at the crown, gradating to 3/8th-inch at the nape.

I observe other patrons in the salon. An old woman (older than me, I think) with obviously dyed hair sitting in curlers under the dryer. I abandoned curlers 30 years ago. And blowdryers five years later. A young local Asian girl with the most beautiful long black silky tresses contemplating a layered look in a magazine. ("No, don't do it," I think.) A poster on the wall for "lowlights...they may be your highlights."

"Didn't we used to call that 'streaking' ?" I asked my hairdresser, who is a year older than me and eligible for social security. "Yes," she said, and then proceeded to describe how she is going to deep-fry four (4) turkeys on Thanksgiving for a big family dinner. She got the turkeys for $2.99 apiece.

"But I had to buy $34 worth of peanut oil for the deep fryer," she added. I guess turkeys are the loss leader for peanut oil sales. Does anybody make money on raising turkeys? The economics of this is really a more interesting topic than hair.

Still, I feel better, the shearing truly does clear the mind, and the day seemed brighter and full of good will afterward. This cut should get me through the solstice, the next full moon, and well into the new year. One less thing to fuss over during this busy season.

Now to find a bargain turkey!